Peripheral Visions: Ethel

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Ethel

The old woman was trying to drag a branch across her yard. Dusty, thinking about his grandmother and how she liked it when he volunteered to be helpful – and also thinking about getting a Good Citizen patch for his Junior Scouts sash – paused on the sidewalk just beyond the white picket fence.

"Do you need some help with that, lady?"

The old woman looked him up and down. It wasn't a long look; Dusty was only a little more than a meter tall. Even at the age of eight, he was small for his age.

"I don't know what you think you can do," she told him. "You don't look strong enough to haul a twig, never mind a big branch like this one."

"I can so!" Dusty said, indignation replacing his feelings of charity and his ambition for a new patch. "Or anyway, I can help you and we can do it together."

The old woman looked back down at the branch. "I guess maybe you're right. We can move this together. Come on in through the gate there." She pointed. Dusty obliged.

A few minutes later, after leaning back almost all the way and pushing hard with his legs until the branch moved a few decimeters, and then repeating the process a few times, Dusty saw that the old woman had directed him to move the branch to a good clear spot where there were already other smaller branches. There were also a lot of leaves.

The old woman had a rake in her hand as soon as the branch was moved. "Thank you, young man," she said. "Now I have to get the rest of these leaves piled up."

"Are you gonna make a fire?" Dusty asked. Some people in the neighborhood chose to burn their yard waste instead of bagging it. His dad said people like that were cheap, and his mom said they contributed to pollution. But Dusty liked the smell of smoke in the air; it meant that autumn was here, and the days would soon start cooling down some.

"I am indeed," the old woman told him.

"I can make fire with a rock and a piece of steel," he told her. "Want to see?"

"A rock?" the old woman asked.

"A special rock, called a flint!"

"You have your special rock with you right now, do you?"

"Uh..." Dusty's enthusiastic grin wilted. "No. It's at home." Then he brightened. "But I can run and get it!"

"Why don't you do the raking instead?" the old woman said, offering him the long-handled implement. "My back is starting to hurt."

"Okay," Dustin said, thinking if the branch wasn't enough to earn him the patch, then for sure the raking would do it.

"And then you can use my lighter to start the fire and we'll burn these leaves and twigs," the old woman told him.

That was what they did; and when the blaze was well established, and the wood of the big branch was starting to burn, she invited him inside. "I baked cookies this morning," she said. "And I even have milk."

"What kind? Almond milk? Oat milk? Soy milk?" Dustin liked soy milk the best.

"Regular milk, from a cow," the old woman said.

This perplexed Dustin.

"Haven't you ever had cow milk?" the old woman asked.

"I don't think so," Dustin said, wondering how anyone got milk from a cow. Didn't milk only come from plants? "Shouldn't we stay here and watch over the fire?" he asked, as the old woman shooed him into her house.

"We can watch from the kitchen window," she said. "It will be fine." She looked around at the gravel yard. Nothing much was going to catch fire that she didn't want burned anyway.

***

The old woman's name was Ethel. She told him about herself as he enjoyed a plate of cookies and a glass of the cow's milk. Her husband, Edwin, had died about six years before, and she was alone ever since then. Dustin asked if she had grandkids who could visit her, and she sighed sadly. She once had two daughters, she said, but they both died in the Great Pandemic.

"They called it the Exhaustion back then," she told him. "I ask myself every day: If they hadn't outlawed masks, maybe my sweet little girls would have lived to grow up." She said. "But... well, here we are."

Masks? Dustin tried to imagine her daughters wearing Halloween masks, and wondered how that would have saved their lives. Maybe if they wore Wonder Woman masks or something. He liked Superman, but his dad wouldn't let him wear a Superman mask. His dad said Superman was woke. Dusty thought that was probably the way it should be. He wondered how Superman could save the world if he was sleeping all the time.

"What's a pademnic?" Dusty asked. "Is that when you forget who you are?"

"That's an amnesiac," she told him.

"Oh," Dusty said, knowing he would never remember a word that hard.

"It's when a lot of people get sick," Ethel explained. "It happened... oh, lord. Forty-eight years ago, now? Forty-six? It's been a long time."

"Why did they get sick?" Dusty asked.

A strange look came over Ethel's face and then she shook her head. "Who knows? The president said it was an attack, and he bombed them for it. But the scientists said it came from animals."

"Animals?"

"Animals all being kept together and sold in a market."

Dustin tried to imagine herds of live animals being sold at the supermarket. Horses? – he wondered. Goats? Maybe even exotic animals, like giraffes and tigers. Though, he thought, probably tigers would be kept separate, since they would eat all the other animals if they weren't.

Then another question occurred to him. "Who did they bomb?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter," Ethel told him.

Dustin thought it did. He was learning about other countries in school. He knew probably ten or twelve by heart, and he could even find them on a globe. "They speak other languages in other countries," he said. "In France, they speak French. In Spain, they speak Spanish. In Italy, they speak Italian."

"What do they speak here?" Ethel asked him teasingly.

That was obvious. This was America. "We speak American!" Dusty said proudly. It was the best language, just like America was the best country. God loved America. God probably spoke American, too. That was what Ms. Mitchell said. She was the new teacher, the one who came in after they arrested Mr. Nelson.

"You can come back if you want," the old woman said when the cookies were gone and the fire had burned down.

"When?"

"Any time," she said.

"Do you reckon you'll need more help?"

Ethel grinned at him. "I reckon I will."

Her teeth look strange: They were totally white and perfectly straight and even, not like his parents' jagged, nicotine-yellowed teeth. More like his grandma's, and her teeth were plastic. He was going to ask Ethel if her teeth were plastic, too, but then thought it might be rude.

The image of his grandmother's teeth in the glass by her bathroom sink came to mind. There was always a blue box next to the glass, a box full of tablets that she used to clean the teeth as they sat in the water. The blue box matched the blue of his grandmother's name, which he sometimes heard other people call her: Thelma.

If she had a glass for her teeth, and a box of tablets, Dustin thought, then it was probably the other brand. The one in the green box. Ethel was a green name. And Ethel's house and clothes reflected that.

***

Dusty returned to Ethel's home to see if she needed anything. He stopped by every few days at first, then every day. When he didn't venture to her door of his own accord, Ethel would call out to him as he passed by her house after school.

Then came the day when Ethel hated him. Dusty was on his way home from school, his mind on other things, when, walking by her house, he noticed that there was a golden glow to the place – well, maybe more of an orange glow. In any case, it looked warm and inviting, a good place to be when the afternoon was this cold and wet and gray.

Also, she might offer him cookies, as she often did. Mom and Dad would still be at work, and it would be hours before they got home. And who knew if Mom would even cook tonight? Sometimes she didn't, and if Dusty complained she would slap him and send him to bed, telling him that he wasn't grateful for how tired she was and how her fingers were worked to the bone.

He didn't believe it. Her fingers looked fine to him. Bone-fingers would look like the hands of a skeleton. Mom had sent him to bed one night last week, telling him those things, and he'd fallen asleep hungry and then dreamed about skeleton hands coming after him... skeleton hands finding their way to his stomach and grabbing him, pinching him so that his stomach hurt with hunger.

Dustin paused on Ethel's porch, thinking about his yellow raincoat and the much softer color of the glow around the house. His coat looked ugly; it was color of a feeling his mother got sometimes when she blamed him for things he hadn't even done.

Dusty raised his arm to knock on Ethel's door, conscious of the yellow color of his rain jacket and the way it gleamed with water. He paused again, staring at his own arm, fascinated.

Then the door opened without him even knocking. A girl stood there. "Hi," she said.

"Hi," Dusty said. "Are you Ethel's granddaughter?" As soon as he asked, he remembered that Ethel didn't have any granddaughters. But maybe she was a neighbor or some other kid from the neighborhood who, like himself, Ethel asked to come and keep her company.

"Come in," the girl said. "There are fresh cookies today." Dusty could tell that it was true; the door opened into the kitchen, and the delicious aroma came to him along with the warm air from inside the house. "She was hoping you would stop by," the girl added.

Really? Dusty pondered that as the girl beckoned him to enter. He opened the screen door and stepped inside, following the girl, who urged him along: "Come on, come on, she'll be really glad to see you."

But Dusty was only halfway into the kitchen when Ethel came storming in. "You filthy little creature!" she screamed at him.

Dusty froze in place, confused at her anger. The yellow kitchen turned red: The light turned red, the very air turned red. The color vibrated and rippled all around him.

"Look what you did to my floor!" Ethel was pointing. "And I just mopped!"

Dusty turned and looked behind him. Muddy tracks documented his progress into the kitchen.

"Get out!" Ethel screamed. Red rippled and swirled anew through the room.

Dusty looked around for the girl, wondering if she would speak up on his behalf or laugh at getting him in trouble, She had hurried him inside, after all, with no care for the newly-mopped floor. The girl must have fled the scene; she was nowhere in sight.

"I said get out!" Ethel screamed, now pointing at the door. "Get out of my house!"

Dusty turned and fled, leaving the room and the red behind.

***

Dusty didn't expect ever to go into Ethel's house again. He didn't even want to walk by the place, convinced that she would scream at him from across the yard or from out of a window if he dared show his face on the sidewalk that ran past her yard.

But after a week, he forgot to take a route that avoided her house. It was a wonderful autumn day, with orange leaves on the trees and an unusually blue sky. His Mom, herself in an unusual happy mood that morning, had called it a magic blue, and said it was like that all the time when she was his age.

Dusty could hardly imagine it... either the sky being that color all the time, or else his mother being his own age. She often told him stories of things that were hard to imagine. A few months earlier, on a hot summer night, they had sat on the hood of the car and tried to cool off in the meager breeze. A perfectly round, orange moon was rising, and it looked huge to Dusty.

"Why is the moon that color?" he asked his mother.

"It's a Harvest Moon," she told him. "Or, it would be if this was September."

"Oh." That made no sense to since it had been August at the time, and he didn't know if she meant that the orange moons usually only happened in September or if an orange moon in August had some other name.

"It's like the Apocalypse," his mother said.

"The what?"

"The moon. It's like the Apocalypse. That's the end of the world, when the moon will turn red as blood and a third of the stars will fall out of the sky."

Dusty supposed they were safe if the moon was only orange, and not red. But he was perplexed about the stars; they were a long way away, and they were the same as the sun, only more distant. If even one of them fell out of the sky, the whole world would burn up. Mr. Nelson had said so.

But then, Mr. Nelson had been arrested after one of the kids in his class told their Mom and Dad what Mr. Nelson said about stars. Then the principal came in and apologized and said that atheists like Mr. Nelson sometimes sneaked in and tried to corru... croruc... do something mean to kids like them.

"Like tell lies!" the principal shouted. "Lies that go against everything in the Bible!"

In a funny overlapping moment, when Dustin thought about the principle saying the word "bible," his mother said it, too.

"What about the bible?" Dustin asked.

"I said, that's what the bible said about the Apocalypse."

If the stars realty did fall out of the sky, Dustin thought, how would there be anything left after that? He asked his Mom.

"That's what the Apocalypse means," she told him. "The end of the world. There's won't be anything left."

It still gave Dusty nightmares, and he'd been thinking about the orange moon and the Apocalypse because of the orange leaves and the unusual blue sky. Was a sky that blue a sign of something? Maybe something as terrifying as the sky was beautiful?

With so many worrisome thoughts preoccupying him, it was no wonder that Dusty forgot and took the shortest route back home, the route he'd walked for years. By the time he realized that he was passing by Ethel's house, it was too late: She was screaming at him again.

Or... no, not screaming. Calling out, but not angry. She was calling his name from the kitchen window. She was sitting at the table, and it looked like she had a cup of coffee in her hand.

"Dusty?" she called.

"I'm sorry!" Dusty called back, frightened. "I won't walk by here ever again!"

'No, wait..."

Dusty was about to run.

"No, no! Dusty! Wait! Stay right there!"

Frozen in place, Dusty trembled with dread. Would she beat him the way Dad did?

But when Ethel came out of the house, she was smiling. She crossed the yard, looking happy. Dusty, watchful, tried to fathom what was going on.

"Why don't you ever come by?" Ethel asked.

"Because you're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you... oh, you mean I got mad that one day, about the muddy tracks on the floor. Oh, my, I'm so sorry for that." Ethel sighed. "I shouldn't have been so angry with you. Will you come inside and help me?"

"You need me to do something for you?" Dusty asked. "What?"

"Not too much. I wanted to get out a box of old things and sort through them, and I can't quite manage to drag it out of the closet. Do you think you could help me with that?"

Dusty hesitated.

"There are nice fresh cookies," Ethel told him.

Dusty still hesitated. Then, seeing how hopefully she was looking at him, he said, "Okay." He followed her to the door that led into the kitchen.

"But take your shoes off, please," Ethel added.

***

The girl Dusty had seen before was sitting on the couch in the living room. While the outside of the house was green and the kitchen was yellow, the living room was blue.

Another girl was sitting on the couch, too. She was younger than the other one, but they looked alike. "Are you sisters?" Dusty asked.

Ethel, who had half disappeared into the closet, called back to him, "Wait until I come out, dear. I can't hear so well."

"But I wasn't talking to..."

"I'm sorry, dear, wait until I come out," Ethel repeated.

"She can't hear us, either," the girl Dustin had seen before said. Then: "I'm Twyla." A name with a delicate color... a color like the pale sky in spring, sort of violet.

"I'm Jean," the younger girl said. A much stronger name, solid and dark brown like the big glossy floor tiles in his uncle's kitchen.

"Are you sisters?" Dusty asked, whispering so that Ethel wouldn't think he was talking to her again and get mad at him for not waiting until she came out of the closet. He glanced at the closet, where Ethel – half-obscured – was moving things out of the way: An old vacuum cleaner, a bunch of clothing that had been piled on top of a box.

"That's the box she wants to look through," Twyla said. "She does this every few years. She looks through the box and thinks she will get rid of some stuff, but then she gets sad, and she never throws anything away."

"Why does she get sad?"

Twyla and Jean shrugged.

"Okay," Ethel said, withdrawing from the closet. "I've cleared stuff out and made space for you to crawl in. Do you think you can fit in between the box and the wall and push?"

"Sure," Dusty said. He was sure he was small enough, and strong enough, to get the job done.

A few minutes later the box was sitting in the middle of the living room. Its progress across the room had been slow – a decimeter at a time, like the big branch in the yard.

"All right, then," Ethel said, looking at the couch, which was now empty. "Maybe we can drag it the rest of the way over so I can sit while I look through this box?"

"Okay," Dusty said, wondering where the two girls had gone.

Maybe they didn't want to help. Or they had seen the box and its contents too many times before and were bored – especially since they seemed to know how things would turn out, with Ethel not actually getting rid of anything.

Maybe they had gone home.

Dusty helped push the box toward the couch. When Ethel and the box were both situated, he was about to ask Ethel about the girls – but then she reached down, tugged the box open, and pulled out a crocheted blanket.

A fragrance rose from the box. It smelled like the past – like someone's memories. His grandmother's old trunk smelled this way, and so did his uncle's attic.

Ethel tossed the blanket to the side and followed up with five or six stuffed animals. They were faded and a little ragged. Dusty wondered how old they were. Maybe they were toys Ethel played with when she was girl?

Ethel was staring into the box. Dusty wondered what she'd retrieve from it next. A moment later he found out: It was a large, oval picture frame. There was a bubble of glass over the frame. Ethel held the picture frame in her lap and stared at it wistfully Dusty couldn't see the picture, but he could tell that it was making her sad – just like Twyla had said she would be.

"What is it?" Dustin asked.

Ethel turned the frame so he could see. It was a photo of Twyla and Jean. They were even younger in the photo than they had been a minute ago when they were sitting on the couch. "My daughters," Ethel said. She moved her hand along the curved frame and her finger pointed. "Twyla," she said. "And Jean."

"Uh huh," Dusty said, realizing at once that he'd better not say anything. The girls were dead; he'd seen their ghosts.

It wasn't the first time he'd seen ghosts. He saw them quite a lot, actually, but he knew better than to let on about it. People usually got upset if he said anything about it – sometimes angry, sometimes scared. It was after he'd tried to tell Mom and Dad about seeing ghosts than they had gotten to be so mean to him.

Ethel set the oval-shaped frame on top of the blanket, and it sat there on the couch, surrounded by the stuffed animals. No wonder she gets so sad, he thought.

Ethel produced more old things from the box – photo albums, baby clothes, framed pictures, books with titles like "Baby's Memories," and folders of documents. In the end, it was just as Twyla – or rather, the ghost of her – said it would be: Ethel decided that there was no need to throw any of the old things in the box away. She had Dusty help her slide the box across the floor and back into the closet.

Dusty's mind was preoccupied with the thought: How do I let her know her daughters are still here? How do I get her to see them, hear them, understand that they've been with her all the time?

***

"My good lord, child, what is this you've brought me?" Ethel was staring at him with a look that, at first, he thought was wonder. Then, as the air around him took on a silvery brightness, he understood she wasn't awed or curious; she was shocked. The air took on blue tinges as she became afraid.

"It's just a weejee board," he said. "My friend Stacey said..."

"I don't care what your friend Stacey said!" Ethel was almost angry now; the way she said Stacey's name, it lost its cheerful yellow color and wilted into grey.

"But... but what's wrong?" Dusty asked.

Ethel seemed to draw the colors back to herself; she was making a deliberate effort to be calm. That reassured Dusty. Mom and Dad didn't do that much, but when they did, they didn't usually end up beating him.

Ethel took the Ouija board from him and placed it on her kitchen table. Her distaste for it was strong and colored the air in a dull rust-red, but that faded as she turned back to him.

"But I just wanted you to be able to talk to them," Dusty said.

"Talk to who?" Ethel asked.

"Your daughters," Dusty said. "Twyla and Jean."

"Oh... oh, my darling boy..." Suddenly the air in the room was a pale, jewellike color of green. One of his crayons was the same color and the crayon was labeled "aquamarianne," or something like that. Ethel reached down and tried to hug him. It was an odd hug that ended up pressing him to her thighs and her knees dug into his belly. Releasing him, Ethel dabbed at her eyes. "That's so sweet," she told him. "But, you see, dead people don't come back to talk to us. And when we try to reach out to talk to them..." She looked at the Ouija board on the table. "It's not them who respond. It's demons."

The air shivered with a dark, alarmed blue.

"Demonds?" Dustin asked. He had a cousin with that name... well, close. His name was Desmond. Like diamond, even if the colors for the two words were different. "What's a demond?"

"It's like a ghost," Ethel said, "but not of a person. It's evil, and it will try to get into your house and, if it can, into your body and your mind."

Dustin had never heard of such a thing. He decided to ask Mom about it; she would know. She talked about evil all the time.

"What you need to know is that when people die, they are dead and gone," Ethel told him.

"But..." Dusty was about to say that Twyla and Jean weren't gone even though they were dead.

"Now, listen to me," Ethel said firmly – but with a gorgeous glow all around her that told him she loved him – "you take that Ouija board back to your friend, and then you forget all about it. And let's you and I talk about today, not things that happened a long time ago like the pandemic, and my girls passing away, and the death of so many other things... libraries, free speech, democracy." She sounded angry again... not, not angry, but something like it. The air quavered with yellow notes, the shade of yellow he saw when Mom or Dad were accusing him of something.

But the yellow had nothing to do with him; it was what Ethel was saying about... about more words he didn't understand. Some kind of berry? Demo-something? Another kind of demond?

Ethel herded him to a chair, sat him down, and talked about all sorts of odd things while she got him a plate of cookies and a glass of cow milk.

***

"Mom, what's a demond?"

"A what?" his mother looked at him blearily. He thought she was just resting on the couch; he didn't know she was napping. She got really made when he woke her up from her naps. Dustin backed toward the dining room. "I'm sorry," he said.

"No, honey, it's okay. I'm not sleeping. I have to get up and make dinner anyway." His mother got to her feet, went into the kitchen, and started rattling around. After a minute Dusty followed her.

"What's a demond?" he asked again.

"A demand?"

"No, a... I heard it was something evil."

"Oh – a demon? Where did you hear that word?"

"From Ethel."

"The old lady you like helping? What did she tell you about demons?"

"She said they want to come into your house and live in your body and make you do bad things."

"Well, she's right. Like when boys touch themselves – that's evil, it's a sin, and don't you do it. You hear me?"

Dustin wondered how he was going to wash or brush his teeth or scratch an itch. He supposed he could get dressed without touching himself if he needed to, but he couldn't imagine why it would be sinful. Maybe Ethel would know.

Dustin thought about his next question. "Mom, when people die – "

"Don't you start talking about ghosts and dead people again," his mother said sharply, swiveling toward him quickly with a paring knife in her hand. The tip of the blade pointed right at his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Dustin said meekly. Then he turned and fled the room.

***

"If she doesn't want a weejee board, then maybe she'll take a crystal ball," Stacey said.

They were at Stacey's house on a Saturday morning. The question of how to put Ethel and her daughters in touch again had teased and tormented Dustin for more than a week, but he didn't know who to ask about it. Ethel didn't believe in ghosts; Mom would hit him if he brought up the subject again. But it wasn't like Mom had forgotten; she had brought it up herself a few times since he mentioned it last, and she even threatened to send him to a bug house if he ever mentioned it again.

Dustin didn't like bugs. But the thought of her threat prompted him to share the story with Stacey, who thought bugs were cool.

"Bugs don't live in houses," she told him. "They live in the yard. And when they do come in the house, they get killed."

"I know that. But maybe they're put into a house, like at the zoo."

"A house full of bugs," Stacey said. Then: "My Dad has a movie about this guy they put in a coffin with a bunch of beetles. And when they let him out again, he's a skeleton!"

"Gross," Dusty said, though he found this fascinating. "Can we watch it?"

Stacey thought that over. "Sure," she said at last. "He doesn't know it, but I figured out his password."

The movie was disgusting and thrilling. The scene with the beetles and the skeleton was brief and happened early on – the rest of the movie was about a mummy that came to life in the middle of the night and killed people. The story occupied Dusty's imagination – and his nightmares – for weeks.

Eventually, Dusty started thinking about Twyla and Jean again – mostly because he saw them a few times as October faded into November and November made its way toward December.

Ethel was still baking cookies one day when he showed up at her house after school. She shuffled him off to the living room. "Do your homework or read a book," she told him. Dusty didn't want to do his homework, because he didn't want to make noise in Ethel's house that might distract or annoy her. Written words didn't make any sense to him. He could work them out – laboriously – but even so, he kept getting them wrong. He had to use the autoreader on his slate in order to hear and understand the assignments, and then he would dictate his answers or essays instead of using the stylus.

It was a relief to see Twyla and Jean were there on the couch, "Hey," he said, sitting next to them.

"What's up?" Twyla asked.

"I've been trying to figure out how to make your Mom see you," Dusty said.

"Why?"

"Well... she's lonely. And she's unhappy. She misses you."

"She's not that lonely," Jean said. "She reads. And she watches TV. And she has you."

"She's been much happier since you started coming over," Twyla confirmed.

"But I can see how she misses you," Dusty said. "It's stupid, because you're right here."

"But if she knew we were here, she would think we're evil demonds," Twyla said, and Jean started laughing. When he asked why that was funny, Twyla explained he kept saying the word wrong: There was only on D, and that was up front.

"Demon," Dusty said.

"Shh!" Twyla giggled. "You want her to hear you?"

"Demon, demon, demon!" Dusty chirped, laughing.

"Stop!" Twyla warned, as Jean fell off the couch and rolled on the floor laughing. "You want her to hear you? She's so superstitious she would probably think a demon possessed you!"

"She'd do an exorcism!" Jean said, still lying on the floor, and then she burst into a whole new round of laughter.

When Ethel stuck her head into the living room to invite Dusty into the kitchen to eat some still-warm cookies, she was mystified to see him sitting on the couch by himself, laughing hilariously.

"What's got you so amused?"

Dusty turned to her and asked, "What's an extortism?"

"What?"

Unseen by Ethel, Twyla clapped a hand over Dusty's mouth and warned him, between giggles, not to dare say that again.

"Come in here and have some cookies," Ethel said, withdrawing to the kitchen once again.

***

"Ethel," Dusty asked a few days later, still trying to puzzle it out, "when you need an answer, but you can't ask anyone, what do you do?"

"What sort of question is that?" Ethel asked him.

Dusty shrugged.

"Is something troubling you? Something you can't figure out how to put into words?"

That sounded like a good description of the problem. Dusty nodded.

"Well, what would your mother tell you to do?"

"She'd tell me to pray," Dusty said.

"So, try that," Ethel said.

***

Dusty prayed hard that night. Then he lay in bed thinking about life and death and ghosts.

His Dad was talking to someone on his phone a few days ago and said that it was better not to rile up old ghosts. When Dusty asked him later what he meant and reminded him that he and Mom insisted there were no such thing, his Dad explained that ghosts were memories.

"And that's all they ever were," Dad said, looking at Dusty in a way that he sometimes did – very rarely – a way that brought the jewellike green color into the room. Aquamarianne.

The adults he knew kept telling him that ghosts weren't real, and when people died they were dead and gone. But the mummy in the movie was dead, and it got up and walked around in its ragged gauze bandages. And Twyla and Jean were the most lively ghosts Dusty had ever seen; most of the time, ghosts just stood around or sat there listlessly, staring off into space, as if busy with memories of their own.

Dusty sighed. Well, he'd said his prayers. He'd asked for Ethel to be able to see and hear and talk with her daughters and know that they were still with her. Mom said that Jesus heard every prayer and answered every prayer. Sometimes the answer was "No." Dusty didn't like to bother people, so he didn't pray much. But this time, he hoped Jesus would listen, and he hoped Jesus would say Yes.

Dusty was drifting off to sleep when a thought occurred to him that caused his eyes to snap open: Wasn't Jesus a ghost, too? If he was, then why had Dusty never seen him? His whole body clenched with dread and disappointment. Ethel wouldn't get her prayer, he thought.

But then he realized it was okay. Jesus wasn't really dead; he'd come back to life on Easter Sunday, and he was alive in Heaven, among all the hot, distant stars that Mr. Nelson had told them about.

Jesus was a badass, Dusty thought. He even had stars in his crown – Dusty had heard the preacher say so. Hot, burning stars, and his hair didn't even catch on fire.

Reassured, Dusty turned on his side and went to sleep.

***

Dusty was so excited that he could barely wait for the end of school. As soon as he was free, he raced up the streets toward Ethel's house.

A block away, he forced himself to slow down and walk. He remembered how Ethel had pulled the colors back to herself when she wanted to calm down, and he tried to do the same thing. He wasn't sure if it was working: The air never turned colors to reflect his feelings, just the feelings of others.

One step, two steps, deep breaths. Then he bounded forward, reached Ethel's gate, and plunged through it to the kitchen door. With a cursory knock, Dusty opened the door. "Ethel?" he called out. "I'm here! Are you here?"

There was no answer.

"Ethel?" he called again. He stooped to take off his shoes – a hard and fast rule in Ethel's house ever since the muddy floor – and then darted toward the living room.

Bursting into the room, Dusty stared with joy at what he saw: Ethel and her daughters on the couch, with Ethel wielding a teapot and filling cups that had been set out on the coffee table.

Jesus heard my prayer! Dusty took in the sight of the tea party and laughed, excited and happy. Could ghosts drink tea? He decided it didn't matter. The moment was too good to worry about things like that.

Ethel looked up. "Why, there you are, darling boy," she said. "Come in, join us." She poured, filling up another cup. Dusty counted: There were four cups, and, he saw, four plates filled with cookies. Ethel had been expecting him.

"So," Ethel said, putting the tea kettle on a trivet. "I gather you have met my daughters?"

Twyla and Jean just laughed. Dusty sat on the couch and Ethel offered him the cup, balanced delicately on its saucer. "We are very high class today," she said, smiling a prim smile that made fun of itself.

Dusty reached for the cup –

His hand remained empty. He tried again.

Suddenly, three was nothing there to grasp. The cup was gone. Ethel was gone. Twyla and Jean were gone, too. Dusty looked around the living room. Where had they...?

Then, with a feeling that would have been dark blue in color if he'd been able to see it, he got up from the couch and started looking through the house. He'd never seen Ethel's bedroom, but he knew it when it when he found it, and he knew what the still shape under the blankets was.

Dusty stared at the unmoving form, wondering what to do.

The police came and, a while later, his Mom showed up too.

"I'm sorry about your friend," she told Dusty, looking at him in a way he hadn't seen in a very long time... a way that said things might be different from now on. Dusty doubted that.

They were sitting on the couch. The very last place Dusty had seen Ethel... well, the real Ethel. Not just the dead body in the bedroom.

Dusty felt his eyes get tight, along with his chest.

"Oh, my darling boy."

It wasn't his Mom. She never called him things like that. Dusty looked up and looked around and saw her across the room. Ethel smiled at him. She was wearing her old gray coat – the one with the sparkly pin she called a brooch. She was dressed up to go out. Dusty understood she wouldn't be coming back again.

"You never need to feel lonely," Ethel told him.

"But you're leaving," Dusty said, his voice garbled with emotion.

"I'll never leave you," his Mom said, but he didn't listen.

"Yes," Ethel said, still smiling. "And... no."

"But why?" She could stay if she wanted; Twyla and Jean had stayed for her. Why did she had to leave him?

"Because I'm your mother," his Mom told him, still thinking he was talking to her. "Mothers don't leave their children."

Suddenly, Dusty understood. Twyla and Jean had stayed for their mother; now their mother was leaving to be with them.

Dusty had a feeling that this last moment with Ethel was fading. "Where?" he asked – the only word he thought he had time for.

Now Mom was looking across the room, too, with a frown on her face. Then her worried eyes fixed on Dusty again.

Dusty ignored her. He watched Ethel, his heart beating hard, afraid at how time was bringing them to a door only one of them could enter... a door that only opened one way.

"You'll know that someday." Ethel winked at him. "When you get there."

With that, she was gone... and yet, a glow remained.

Next week a new world comes into focus – and on its surface, the first colony mission from Earth that might survive and found a fresh chapter for human history. But for the mission's commander, the idea has prompted doubts about the morality of opening the way for a dismal history to repeat.